Outdoor Allies: Osprey Orielle Lake
Osprey Orielle Lake speaks out at an action for the protection of the Brazilian Amazon and Indigenous peoples in Brazil, New York City, 2019. Photo by Erik McGregor
Ever wondered how you can do more for public lands but you aren’t sure where to start? Outdoor Alliance’s Outdoor Allies series explores how other outdoor adventurers got their start in advocacy work and their advice for how you can harness your passion for the outdoors into advocacy for the land and water you love. Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International, an organization dedicated to accelerating a global women’s climate justice movement. For the past 12 years, she has worked nationally and internationally with grassroots and Indigenous leaders, policy-makers and scientists to promote climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized energy future. Osprey lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, within the territories of the Coast Miwok people.
Can you tell us a bit about your relationship to the outdoors?
I was very fortunate to grow up in the small coastal town of Mendocino in Northern California. This developed in me a deep relationship with the ocean and redwoods, sparking my first interest in doing environmental work, which was protecting the ancient redwood trees.
What led you to your work at WECAN?
We are in a climate emergency. We know that we are in dire need of a paradigm shift and an upwelling of global action, and that the window for meaningful action on climate change will not be open for long.
Given the lack of urgency and insufficient ambition of international climate agreements and national climate policies, I was called to create WECAN to put forth a fierce call to action by and for women leaders and their networks.
Osprey Orielle Lake (left) leads the Women for Climate Justice contingent during the People’s Climate March in Washington D.C., 2017. Photo courtesy of WECAN International
Women, particularly Indigenous women and women of color, are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis and environmental degradation, yet, at the same time, it is internationally recognized that women are critical to implementing just and community-based climate change and sustainability solutions. WECAN was created to accelerate a global women's movement for the protection and defense of the Earth’s diverse ecosystems and communities, focusing on short-term and long-term systemic change and solutions to address the climate crisis and the root causes of environmental degradation and socio-economic inequalities.
Your video about your work on the Tongass is incredibly moving. Will you tell us a bit more about that effort? Why are women’s voices, especially Indigenous women’s voices, so important to bring to the table around protecting the Tongass?
The Tongass Rainforest of Alaska is the traditional homelands of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Peoples; the largest national forest in the U.S.; and has been called 'America’s climate forest' due to its unsurpassed ability to sequester carbon and mitigate climate impacts. Since the 1950’s, aggressive, controversial commercial logging clear-cut large areas of the Tongass, negatively impacting the forest and the local Indigenous Peoples who are tightly intertwined with the dynamic ecosystem. Even with a destructive history of industrial logging, the Tongass still contains the largest remaining tracts of temperate old-growth rainforest in the world and a vital solution to our current climate crisis.
Osprey Orielle Lake (Left) with the WECAN Indigenous Women’s Tongass Delegation to Washington D.C. in 2019. The Delegation met with Congressional offices and the USDA to advocate for the protection of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. Photo by: Melissa Lyttle
WECAN’s Women for Forest Tongass program is led by Indigenous women leaders from the Tongass who are developing long term strategies to protect the Tongass rainforest, Indigenous rights and lifeways in the region. The Tongass remains at risk of further logging and through our program we assemble Indigenous women’s delegations to meet with lawmakers and advocate for the Tongass, and the continuation of the Roadless Rule, an important measure to protect Alaska's Tongass National Forest.
Indigenous women are at the forefront of local and global efforts to protect and defend the Tongass and other territories worldwide of immense socio-ecological diversity – taking action on the frontline of grassroots movements and struggles, and within international climate negotiations and political processes. Due to their close relationship with the land, Indigenous women hold unique and invaluable Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as well as spiritual and philosophical understandings critical to healing and maintenance of the Earth’s climate and cycles.
What do you wish more decision makers understood about your work?
Women, and specifically Black women, Indigenous women, and women of the Global South, continue to be vastly underrepresented and undervalued as key leaders in the climate crisis.
It is clear that women experience climate change with disproportionate severity precisely because their basic rights continue to be denied in varying forms and intensities across the world. However, against all odds and against great challenges, women are demonstrating every day that they have unique and essential ideas and skills to offer at this turning point in history, as humanity faces a crisis of survival and must make crucial changes and decisions about how we are living with the Earth and each other. WECAN has been collecting data over the past decade detailing not only how women are impacted by climate change but also how women are at the forefront of all action to address the global climate crisis. Through our Women Speak database you can also find thousands of stories of women leading struggles and solutions for climate justice.
Additionally, I would like more people to understand the very crucial role Indigenous communities play in protecting our planet. 80% of remaining global biodiversity is within the lands or care of global Indigenous peoples who have protected them over many generations. Indigenous rights and sovereignty must be protected and upheld if we want to preserve and protect the Earth and our climate.
Do you have any advice for women (or men) who want to get involved in climate advocacy?
Get involved. This is no time to be on the sidelines, we know from global scientists, including the IPCC report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C, as well as frontline leaders from around the world that we are in this small window of time to take significant and urgent action to avert the worst impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and impacts on affected communities. It’s time for everyone to find our passion and courage, find an entry point, and jump in. Climate advocacy is also very exciting in creating community and generating hope.
Lightning Round:
On your reading list/a favorite book: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
Another activist you admire: There are so many incredible women leaders around the world that inspire me every single day, and I would love to uplift their voices. You can hear from some of these wonderful leaders in our recent webinars and online trainings.
Your favorite outdoor place: The Northern coast of California and redwoods.
This September, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International is organizing the ‘Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice: Solutions from the Frontlines and the Protection and Defense of Human Rights and Nature’, a free, gender-diverse public forum taking place virtually to draw attention to root causes of multiple interlocking crises, and present the diverse array of visions, projects, policy frameworks and strategies with which they are working to shape a healthy and equitable world. Please learn more here: https://www.wecaninternational.org/womens-assembly
Learn more about WECAN, about Indigenous women’s food sovereignty and food security, and connect with WECAN: